High school teens building a Battlestar Galactica Viper simulator in a garage

Five high school students are building their very own Viper — the fighter spacecraft of the protagonists in the TV show Battlestar Galactica — right in a garage. Because it's not quite possible to build a spacecraft in your backyard with a limited budget, the teenagers took the fuselage of an old, small plane and mounted it on a platform that can rotate 360 degrees. The motion control platform turns the erstwhile harmless aircraft scrap into a nauseating ride, as you can see in the video above. We hope the one who gave it a test spin hadn't eaten his lunch yet.

The young engineers and their mentors are building the Viper simulator for the Bay Area Maker Faire in May. The Viper in the video is far from being complete, though — the students plan to modify it further to resemble the real Viper more. To cover the costs of building the simulator, the team is trying to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter. They're also accepting donations through the project's official website.